


Leviathan's Mind

by YoursTruly (HopeisNope4)



Series: No Rest [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, High Chaos (Dishonored), High Chaos Corvo Attano, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Orphanage, Suicide Attempt, Wet Dream, dynamic study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 04:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20576105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeisNope4/pseuds/YoursTruly
Summary: Leviathan's mind: A bone charm that allows the player to regenerate while underwater





	Leviathan's Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Hello dearies. Just a quick explanation before we get started. First of all, yes, I am aware that Corvo was not an orphan canonically. However, all of the pieces in this series are in High Chaos mode or in this case TOTAL CHAOS mode. What does this mean? Essentially, everyone gets the shitty end of the stick. Some things will be changed. The purpose of these short fics is to explore the possibilities and relationship between High Chaos Corvo and The Outsider. It is significantly easier to believe that a dark character is dark when they come from a place of no love or happiness. This is how I will be changing the story for my own benefit. It’s a fanfic. It doesn’t have to follow the canon storyline.  
But I digress. Thank you for reading and I hope to see you again in the next chapter.  
Regards,  
~ Hope

Serkonos bathed in the rampant heat of Corvo's memory. Salty air and red-stained ports filled with the corpses of legless beasts. Wild winds and moonlit nights in dark urban alleys. Such was the youth of Corvo Attano. It was an identity he had long since left behind. He remembered the way that his name was once some kind of detriment, a crack in his armor, allowing the snobs of Dunwall a clear vantage of who he had once been. Now? The name did not arise sneering embarrassment. Only fear. And only the Outsider truly knew the kind of carnage left behind by his toy. The amount of blood he had spilled via guards of the royal quart: enough to fill the ocean, he was quite sure. But Corvo did not fret over things so trivial. It was all a game and so long as he and Emily were the winners, what was the issue? 

So long as the throne was occupied in his favor he wasn't to complain. No reason, especially due to his particular talents. If he found himself not liking those who opposed him, who was to stop his fixing it? Every now and then, he would be struck by a sudden memory of an old man in his dingy, throwing himself at him, trying to change Corvo’s mind, wane him towards the pathetic structure of mercy. What a joke. 

But in the event such things were to perturb him, (perhaps perturbed gave it too much credit? Too much power over his emotions, he would think to himself) it was as simple as finding a lonely soul in the dark. Retracting his sword and digging two fingers into the still heart of whoever was unlucky enough to meet him in the night. 

No, he was not the person he was as a child. Not even close. Some kind of Shadow, perhaps? 

Karnaca was not always a fond place for children. Despite its title as "Jewel of The South," it was in fact not a fond place for most ages of people majority of the time. All of its beauty came from the brilliant scald of light that attacked all it touched. It did not care for whom it was destroying. The sun does not care for a life so pathetic when its own existence spans billions of years. The lion does not heed the lamb. And such as the sun, the people of the city of Karnaca did not care for a child that had not a future to find hope, not skill to attribute power and not the parents which to call their own. 

And Corvo Attano had been no different. How was he to complain when it was all he knew? All he would ever know? The growth of self-awareness, sentience, is an unfortunate thing for those who are given a short stick. The curse of man extends to all who grow farther than the innocence of childhood. That curse: of self-awareness. And perhaps it was the self-awareness that was to blame for the emotions that followed, not even so much his orphanage. Regardless, it was brutal. It probably would even cause him to become brutal, depending on how much longer he held on. And why hold on when it would be so easy to just let go?  
Why hold on when there is so little to grasp in the first place? When every menacing glare, ignorant shout, and weeks of hunger made it that much more appealing? The dark stone he slept on, the cry of other children in the night, the laughs of rich bankers, businessmen, and all of their families echoing through his mind like a sick song, reverberating again and again and again. 

If only he had the clarity, the courage, and spine to stomach the idea of maybe, just maybe, letting it all go... 

Forever this time.

Young Corvo was not sure what had caused him to break. He remembered the feeling though. Demeaning and verbose were the thoughts that flooded him and soon they became silent all at once. It wrenched his gut. However, this may have not been the cause of the bile that rose in his throat, made his abdomen clench. It could have been the food he had scrounged, just maybe. But it could have also been the fact that he had walked so many miles to reach the outskirts of the city he had inhabited for so long. Or even the thousand-foot drop he found himself staring down into, towards the sea, over the tallest cliff in Serkonos. Or the thought that had grazed the back of his mind before he came. It was an idea most sane men would even become sick encountering in reality: Letting go. 

Taking in deep breaths of humid air under a clouded night, he could feel his heart pound within its cage, almost a kind of begging. A soul longing for relief of any kind. He was almost crying, but something held the wetness in his eyes from overflowing. He wasn't sure what. Tears, he decided, would do him no favors wherever he was going. Trying to stop thinking about not thinking about it made it harder to do so. Stop trying, he scolded to himself. Young Corvo looked over the horizon line of the ocean, which somewhat had melded with the dark skyline. It was almost as if the upper crust of the ocean and the dreary clouds above had become one. He tried to focus on them as he fell, but everything was too fast, too frightening to be vivid. Now not only did the ocean meld with the sky. With falling, he found that in some bittersweet way, in one superposition of time, everything collided into one. The earth and the sky and the void. All of the people of Dunwall, Karnaca, Dabokva, Wynnedown. All of the short life he had lived, the life he would have found moving forward. Soon, even he would collide with all of the everything he could now see flying in every possible direction, all at glorious speed. 

When he did, it hurt. It hurt like all of the weight of the isles crashing down on him. 

It hurt so bad he began to feel numb to any pain that struck his nervous system at all. Inebriation, the confusing kind that came from his most animal instinct: gone and buried under five feet of water, then ten, (how far would he go?) almost 15 even. His head must have been about to burst under the immense pressure. Surely this meant he was dead- or at the very least dying? Or was this all there was the end of a life? No brilliant light? Woosh of air as his soul was absorbed into the void? Underwhelmed, that he certainly would have been, had he not noticed a shift in the water around him. 

It wasn't to say that he saw anything in particular, amidst the dark ripple of dense water. It made him feel for a second that the ocean might have found itself its own level of being. One that gave it a presence, infinite and beyond that of even the sun. How tragic to walk out of the way of one monster, straight into the jaws of another. Devouring him, swallowing him alive and leaving him to wonder in the dark, was he perhaps being driven into insanity? That though was one that would stay with him long after he should have been dead, causing a kind of tear in his identity. But what is insanity but a festering wound of the mind, afflicted by The Outsider? It is nothing more than something in need of being cured. The overseers knew it all too well. Somewhere deep down perhaps, he knew it too. It wasn’t until years later, however, that he connected the dots of all that occurred post his striking the sea. It was after his lack of oxygen began to blacken his eyes that he felt something cold reach from beyond, grasp him horribly.

Surely he was being taken by some predator of the sea? But a bite never came, only a stunning force from below, billowing him upward against gravity and fluid undercurrents. Then, all was still. It was as if someone had snapped their fingers and balance had found the waters around his still body. So he found the will in him to look down, forcing his eyes with any remaining dribble of energy to focus. It was there he found a shape not quite a shadow but a blur of black against the Navy waters. Was this the predator he had been waiting for? He became more certain of it the closer it got, edges refined it and details becoming more and more evident. A body slick and thin. Pointed fins of poisonous barbs and swinging tail tipped with what was likely hard as iron. And as it came closer, as his mind slowly slipped out its body, The creature came close enough that he could see it’s large head. It was that of a snake. A leviathan. It's mouth slightly parted, swimming towards him with an almost sleek appearance. How oddly beautiful it was: His final thought before he succumbed to nothing and let go. 

The grown man awoke from the memory- or in this case a dream surrounding one he had shoved into the aging recesses of his mind. Corvo rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye which itched from dryness. Sleep still hung thick in his head like a slush and he damned himself for waking for such a ridiculous reason. It was simply stupid, to say the least. He stood and went toward the bathroom, relieving himself once there. 

His piss splashed the water and the noise broke the extreme quiet of his setting, rippling through him with a strange anxiety that stemmed from years of fear. 

Corvo went back to bed, now finding himself restless. He focused on the thought, on how his self-control over his own feelings had become a strange puzzle. The idle, perhaps, was getting to him. Nothing incredibly interesting had happened over the last couple of months. It was quite empty, boring. He couldn't even begin to imagine what The Outsider was going through. The black-eyed bastard. Something clicked in that moment as he came to a conclusion that should have been made long ago. There was something about the memory of him sinking into the waves of the ocean that had left him with questions, feelings long unanswered. 

It was the waters of a never-ending sea as they lapped at his small body in the summer night. The presence he felt had been more than a sea monster. 

It reminded him of the similar fall he had taken during his plight of capturing Sokolov. The sky had been similar that evening in Dunwall. The horizon hazed into a world of gray, cut with the outline of black buildings, sickly and rung with tears. The bridge across the bay loomed in its own shade of ominous steel gray. Corvo could hear the singing veins of whale oil charging the arch pylons. It was distant but as he came closer the muffled voices of the watchmen became singular. He blinked forward rapidly on currents of air and void energy. With every forward movement a whisper toned over his ears, feeling as if someone were breathing down his neck,

Ahhs Ohhs Diess...

If he hadn't been so untrusting of his senses, he would have thought it was getting louder,

Ahhhh Ohhhs Diesss...

Even in spite of the increasing clarity, the words were still unrecognizable. They were not of any language Corvo had ever encountered. Somehow he knew that they were something he would never decipher. So he ignored them, focussed on the placement of his steps, concentrated on the covert nature of each movement. And a new energy filled him. It had been something he noticed when The Outsider had introduced himself, luring Corvo into the void. It wasn't like the energy that came from a deep and splendid rest, nor was it all too similar to the energy one found in the exciting lust of anticipation. However, it was in a curious way akin to adrenaline, a flutter of the stomach and thrilling satisfaction. 

It was a kind of understanding that was similar to the whispers: ineffable, therefore pointless to over examine. 

Suddenly there were two men shouting and walking towards Corvo. He hadn't realized until then that he had stopped in the middle of the road, gaping like a surprised idiot. God, he hated how off he was, the lack of control he displayed was devastating. He clenched a demanding fist, appeared behind the men, and slit their throats with quiet ease. He was relieved to find that no more had noticed. He hadn't the particular drive for whatever reason. On certain occasions, he would have even experienced anger that there were no more to slaughter, to wait for them to notice the smell of copper and an overly quiet atmosphere to investigate. He wished to fly down from above and feel- well, whatever it was exactly the energy was. The void energy. He found himself over the last week becoming quite accustomed to the rush that came not only from using it until spent, but also replenishing. 

Piero had introduced him to the experimental drug early in his career. He had given Corvo a lengthy introduction on all of its material properties, none of which he cared too much for. The man irritated him. He probably would have killed him had there not been a requirement of his presence. He also recalled finding the pervert not long after the bridge, spying on Ms.Callista. Pig. Regardless, Piero's elixir had become quite the staple in his diet. At first, it was no more than once a day, and not even the full amount. But as the days passed, time carried on, he moved on from two to four and now five. Blue liquid lining his stomach and filling him with the energy to fly. To see through walls. To teleport from one rooftop to the next. Soon, to stop time itself. To desire upon desire one more rush of consciousness rung from his brain like a wet towel. Then to be replenished and filled, a human oasis of void energy, a weathered breathing that corrupted him, drove him to addiction. 

Maybe he would find one amongst the rubble and heaps of collapsed buildings? He would wish it, at the least. 

It lingered in the back of his mind as he tore through the levels of the high bridge, searching for the wiring panel that would set him forward, hopefully releasing him from the lack of alertness he now dwelled in. This fact was proven when he heard the slick of a leather boot over the metal tile of the floor. A gasp,

"You! Guards, to arms!"

Corvo painfully resisted an eye roll as he strode toward the guard with little hesitance, full confidence. The guard held a ridged defense, apparently waiting for help that would never come. (He had disposed of all other guards on the level above and so below, consequently.) The intruder kicked at the man's leg, throwing him off balance and causing him to smack the back of his head. The guard let out a yelp and sequenced groan of equal fear and pain. His sword was kicked away, over the edge of the platform and into the rough waters below. Corvo decided then that the man was not worth his time and went back to utilizing his rewire tool. It was a mistake, he soon realized. The singular guard flew at him from the side with no sound but a stuttering breath. Corvo was a tall man. He was broad and large. Typically one person was no issue on a given day, especially when that person fought with their own fate in mind. Corvo had half expected the man to run off, hideaway and pray not to be found. Instead, he acted as a martyr, flinging the entirety of his weight in the assassin's direction, throwing himself and the perpetrator over the side rail. Down, down, with the air knocked from his lungs. Adrenaline flooded him and he was lost to even consider blinking to safety. 

Instead, he experienced once again the collision of all things, unfocused as his vision became temporarily useless. Anger erupted and a wrathful scream left his lungs. This wasn’t a part of the plan. How was he to intimidate Sokolov while soaked to the bones and dripping with smell of sea? Why couldn’t it just be simple so that his skill was reflected via the ease of his work?

As he fell, something slipped from his pocket, and he forced his vision to focus on what. A bone charm. He couldn’t remember which exactly it was but he had gone out of his way for the thing and wasn’t about to let it disappear now. He snatched it back with skilled hands, just barely.

And as he had so long ago, as had happened in a kind of far off dream, Corvo broke the surface of the water. And soon the anger left him, adrenaline raged through his veins, circulating, pumped by his racing heart. It increased the rate at which a certain energy filled him from gut to head, building to a climax that hit him like an electric rail. He clenched the bone charm and writhed as the waters around him filled up over his head, engulfed him and drove void energy straight to his spine, curling around his heart and stomach. He felt completely and utterly filled to the brim, addictive desire now quenched. He wanted to cry in relief but didn’t wish for the sting of salt in his eyes to taint the pleasure of vitality. If only he could scream, could breath for just-

Then it was over and a massive held exhale escaped his lungs. He wasn’t wet any longer. He wasn’t even in the ocean. The waters were gone and he felt empty once again. He was in his room, lying on damp sheets with covers kicked down to his waist alone. He was drenched, but only by sweat, leaving his mouth dry. He noticed a heated feeling over his groin and dampening his thighs. Corvo’s brain felt muddled again. He hadn’t even remembered falling back asleep. Then, steps upon the fine polished floor, 

“My, my, what do we have here,”

His chest continued to heave with startled breath as the steps came closer. He tried to focus his eyes but it was nigh and he could only barely make out the figure that towered over his bed. 

“Hello Corvo.”


End file.
